Karma and you...

Karma is universally believed to be a leveling mechanism for our actions, or in simple words, a ‘tit-for-tat’ phenomenon. However, this perception of Karma is in its core essence, flawed because it assumes some sort of a judge or a jury who would decide on the extent of good or evil in an action and take a leveling measure sometime in the future.
The existence of this karma judge leaves you a victim, completely devoid of any sort of any responsibility, accountability or power to do anything about anything that happens! This is fundamentally against the design of the universe. The universe is designed free from third party balancing acts and has within its core, immutable laws that govern every aspect of our existence.
Consider for a moment the law of gravity. It existed long before Newton understood it. Our understanding of the law has changed since then as we develop a deeper understanding of the particles that make up the universe and even though we might now believe that an apple falls back to earth when thrown up because of the electromagnetic field created between matter, at the end of the day, the action still remains the same and will always remain the same, irrespective of our understanding.
The law of karma is similar to the law of gravity in the matter that it too is instantaneous. Just as when you throw an apple in the air, there is no judge measuring the force with which you threw the apple and later, sometime in the future, throwing the apple back down, so is no one governing your actions but an impartial, unintelligent law.
The law of karma states that any thought, intent or action creates positive or negative energy instantaneously and this energy has a direct impact on the creator. In other words, imagine yourself as a reservoir of energy. Every positive thought, intent or action that you have adds to this reservoir and every negative thought, intent or action that you have removes energy from this reservoir.
Each addition to this reservoir brings about an increased ability to add to this reservoir and each removal brings about a decrease in this ability. So whenever you think, intend or do something positive, the positivity gained from that brings about a change in you to do something else that is positive and takes you further in your journey towards real happiness and peace.
However, every negative thought, intent or action brings causes negative energy that takes away any happiness or peace that you may feel in that instant and that in turn reduces your ability to be happy and peaceful in the future.
The extent of this karmic influence depends upon the nature of the thought, intent or action. A man who has killed someone else at war is said to never be the same. In fact, there are diseases and conditions such as pneumothorax that are observed in soldiers returning from war. While the war was not started by them and often they killed enemy soldiers based on their orders, killing as an act itself is so inhuman that the negative karma caused has a large instant impact on the person. A karma of this size takes a lot of positive energy to overcome and its effects even manifest itself into the physical world.
Now that we understand what karma is, it is equally important to understand what causes karma. The general description of karma only deals with instances where action takes place. However, actions form a miniscule portion of our involvement with the universe and karma governs every aspect of our interaction with the universe.
We interact with the universe at every instant through thoughts, intentions and less often, through actions. Karma governs each such thought and intention too. For example, when you are really angry at someone and are thinking of doing that person harm, at that instant negative energy is being generated while you think about it. As the intensity of your thought rises, so does the negativity that it generates. An intention generates a higher amount of negative energy because it adds a higher degree of intensity to the thought and an action even higher because it attaches an outcome to the already existing thought and intention.
So even though the highest instantaneous karma is often created by actions, we have thousands of thoughts for every intention and tens of situations where we intend but do not follow through with an action. Thoughts and intentions thus create more karma than actions do and are much harder to master!
Understanding karma opens the doors to taking responsibility of one’s own life. Karma is not about getting even with someone through an impartial judge. Someone else’s actions are immaterial to you but your reaction to those actions themselves causes karma. One must realize that someone else’s actions can never hurt them at anything but a physical level. The only one responsible for managing your karma is you and you are the only one who can do anything about making yourself happy!
Creating positive energy once you understand karma is again very difficult and a process that needs continuous effort. One must watch his thoughts, intentions and actions and ask himself, ‘Is this thought, intention or action going to make me happy?’. For example, if someone has hurt you, and you catch yourself thinking about hurting them back, take a moment and step back to a third person’s point of view and ask yourself if that thought is going to make you happy. The answer will come from within you.